Modern rock climbing involves the use of holds by climbers to scale a real or artificial rock face with crash pads, anchors and a rope, all of which reduce the inherent risks involved in falling. Holds exist in nature in the rock itself and in rock climbing gyms through a combination of hand-holds and foot holds built into walls themselves as well as individual climbing holds which are frequently attached to climbing walls via bolts or screws. While climbing walls are generally made out of wood or plastic panels, frequently with textured coatings, the holds are frequently cast out of a urethane-based polymer.
Climbers reduce their risks in climbing via either ground-based pads (as in the case of bouldering, where heights are generally under 20 feet) or with a combination of anchors and rope. Ropes may be secured to the climbers via knots and carabiners and to the walls (indoors or outdoors) using one or more anchors (anchors are also known as “protection” within rock climbing communities). These anchors are secured to a foundation, which may comprise climbing walls, solid rock, large boulders, trees, ice, or even snow. The anchors themselves divide rope-based climbing into two general categories: sport and traditional climbing.
Sport climbing uses bolted anchors, which are semi-permanently attached to the rock via holes drilled into the rock face. Climbers on a sport route do not have to set anchors while they are climbing because the anchors on a sport climbing route were previously set, in some cases months or even years before. Sport climbing is available both outdoors and in rock-climbing gyms, where the anchors are drilled into the wood or plastic panels.
Traditional climbing uses mechanical anchors to establish temporary protection from falling. These anchors may be wedged into gaps in the rock face and they have many descriptive and trade names, including cams, hexes and wire nuts. The anchors that are set into the wall this way must be removed by a second climber following the first—the lead climber sets the protection anchors while the following climber takes them out as she goes. Setting protection anchors is referred to as lead climbing while taking out protection anchors is referred to as cleaning protection. While man-made rock climbing walls currently support a wide variety of climbing, they are generally unable to support the setting of traditional climbing anchors because neither the holds themselves nor the walls are designed to support the forces involved in arresting a fall by a climber connected to the wall via a mechanical anchor.
Because of the inability to set traditional protection anchors on rock climbing gym walls, nearly all climbing in rock climbing gyms is limited to bouldering or sport climbing, making the transition from the rock climbing gym and sport climbing to outdoor traditional climbing challenging. There simply is no cost-effective way to actively learn and practice traditional rock climbing protection-setting techniques in a rock climbing gym setting.
Some complete rock climbing walls may be built out of solid rock or a rock-like substance such as concrete, which in theory could be used to teach climbers how to set protection in a gym, however in practice these walls will not allow a gym to dynamically add or re-position spots where climbers can set anchors. Rock-climbing gym walls themselves are generally static and immovable.
One early attempt to allow for traditional climbing protection on a climbing wall is presented in U.S. Pub. No. 2015/0056590 (“Apparatus and method for traditional rock climbing training”). That disclosure presented a unitary climbing anchor for attaching to a climbing wall and adapted to engage a piece of traditional protection. It had a frame with a hole adapted to receive a bolt for holding the climbing anchor to a climbing wall and a tongue including a tether hole and protruding from the frame. Such crude climbing anchors have a narrow usefulness and, like other minor departures from the prevalent culture of indoor sport climbing, fail to provide for a climber falling in an unexpected manner.